192
Opinion of the Court
III
Originally, the codefendant's confession in the case before us, like that in Bruton, referred to, and directly implicated, another defendant. The State, however, redacted that confession by removing the nonconfessing defendant's name. Nonetheless, unlike Richardson's redacted confession, this confession refers directly to the "existence" of the nonconfessing defendant. The State has simply replaced the non-confessing defendant's name with a kind of symbol, namely, the word "deleted" or a blank space set off by commas. The redacted confession, for example, responded to the question "Who was in the group that beat Stacey," with the phrase, "Me, , and a few other guys." See Appendix, infra, at 199. And when the police witness read the confession in court, he said the word "deleted" or "deletion" where the blank spaces appear. We therefore must decide a question that Richardson left open, namely, whether redaction that replaces a defendant's name with an obvious indication of deletion, such as a blank space, the word "deleted," or a similar symbol, still falls within Bruton's protective rule. We hold that it does.
Bruton, as interpreted by Richardson, holds that certain "powerfully incriminating extrajudicial statements of a codefendant"—those naming another defendant—considered as a class, are so prejudicial that limiting instructions cannot work. Richardson, 481 U. S., at 207; Bruton, 391 U. S., at 135. Unless the prosecutor wishes to hold separate trials or to use separate juries or to abandon use of the confession, he must redact the confession to reduce significantly or to eliminate the special prejudice that the Bruton Court found. Redactions that simply replace a name with an obvious blank space or a word such as "deleted" or a symbol or other similarly obvious indications of alteration, however, leave statements that, considered as a class, so closely resemble Bruton's unredacted statements that, in our view, the law must require the same result.
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